The problem of the soul’s immortality has ever arrested the attention of serious thinkers.¹ The very hours before his death, Socrates, ‘the best, the wisest and the noblest man,’ spent with his friend Crito in discussing this persistent and fascinating subject. To Augustine of Hippo belongs the distinction of having been the first philosopher in the Christian Tradition of the West to compose a formal treatise on the immortality of the soul.² In his Soliloquia the young Augustine had already exclaimed: ‘First of all I should like to know if I am immortal.’³

Some authors⁴ do not seem to appreciate...

Augustine wrote De quantitate animae in Rome, sometime during 387 or 388.¹ In his Retractationes he states:² ‘In the same city I wrote a dialogue in which there is a lengthy treatment and discussion of the soul.’ He adds that the treatise has been so entitled, since the question of the soul’s magnitude was therein submitted to a careful and searching examination for the purpose of showing, if possible, that the soul lacks corporeal quantity, but is nevertheless a great reality (tamen magnum aliquid esse).

The dialogue in which St. Augustine and his friend Evodius participate is divided into six...

These six books On Music were begun, before Augustine’s baptism, at Milan in 387 A.D., and finished later in Africa, after the De magistro in 391.¹ While they are, therefore, among the earliest work of his career, they are not the earliest, but follow the four philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum. They also straddle the period of the De immortaliate animae, the De quantitate animae and the De libero arbitrio. They are, however, only one of a series of treatises on the liberal arts which Augustine started, but never finished. He speaks of finishing one on Grammar and of starting one...

In A.D. 373, the nineteen-year-old Augustine was lured into an attachment with the Manichaeans; in 382, when he came to know one of the most prominent among them, the highly reputed Faustus, the enchantment was dispelled and the attachment ended.¹ While in those nine years Augustine never passed from the lower Manichaean grade of ‘Hearer’ to that of one of the ‘Elect,’² his eminence among them was such that his withdrawal occasioned them deep regret.³ Whatever the extent to which he actually embraced the tenets of the heresy, he certainly acquired a detailed knowledge of Manichaean doctrine and usages, evidence...

Although On Faith in Things Unseen is one of St. Augustine’s minor writings, its finished style shows the masterful construction, lucid presentation of ideas, and beauty of expression so characteristic of most of what he wrote. It is also a typical example of St. Augustine’s apologetical style of argument and his appeal to prophecy.

Because of its omission from the Retractationes and the Indiculum of Possidius, On Faith in Things Unseen long was considered spurious. The Louvain theologians had relegated this work to the place of a supplement, in their edition of St. Augustine, basing this censure on the opinion...